Articles

The struggle against privatisation in SA has entered a qualitatively new
stage. At the end of August Cosatu will be holding a two-day general
strike to protest against the government’s plan to privatise the
Electricity Supply Commission (ESKOM).

This is a development of enormous political significance. Although the
general strike is in protest against the privatisation of Eskom, it is
in fact a protest against the government’s entire privatisation
programme. Privatisation is the nuclear warhead of the neo-liberal
arsenal the government has been using in its war against the working
class over the past 5 years. In that sense the general strike is a
protest against the government’s macro-economic strategy known as the
Growth Employment and Redistribution strategy (Gear).

Gear has devastated the lives of the SA working class. Introduced to
replace the mildly reformist Reconstruction and Development Programme,
Gear’s aim was to bring SA macro-economic policy in line with the
prevailing neo-liberal Washington consensus: to slash government
expensiture in pursuit of a zero-deficit budget by 2002, downsize the
publc sector, lower wages and undermine conditions, outsource and
privatise. The lowering of tariff barriers by the Minstry of Trade and
Industry (headed by a central committee member of the South African
Communist Party as are all the ministries key to the implementation of
the various aspects of Gear) has resulted in the loss of a million jobs
in the clothing, textile and leather indutries alone since 1990.

After coming to power in 1994, the ANC not only continued the social and
economic war waged on the working class by the Apartheid regime, but
intenified it. Tariff barriers have been lowered at a rate faster than
that demanded by the World Trade Organisation. Far from attracting
foreign investment, it has led to a flight of capital with 5 of the top
ten companies on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange relocating their
head offices overseas.To maintain the limit on public spending in the
health sector, the government has refused to supply free drugs to Aids
sufferers despite the fact that SA has the highest number of HIV/AIDS
sufferers in the world.

The result is that SA is competing with Brazil for the position of the
most unequal society in the world. Unemployment is estimated at between
6 - 8 million, more than 40% of the economically active populaton. 57%
live below the poverty line with 18 million people earning less than
R350 (less than 35 pounds) per month when the minimum living level for a
low income family of five is very coservatively estimated at R1 400
(under 14 pounds) a month.

The significance of the general strike is further heightened by the fact
that through the proposed privatisation of Eskom the govermment is
planning to give their privatisation programme a real lift off. The
privatisation that has taken place so far – mainly in local government –
is small beer compared to what they are planning this year and the
potential bonanza they are anticipating from the proceeds of the sale.
Eskom’s privatisation is part of a package including also the
telecommunication (Telkom), arms procurement (Armscor) and transport
(Transnet) parastatals. Big business at home and abroad have been happy
with Mbeki’s public pledge as a defender of the neo-liberal faith. But
they want to know now is where is the beef?

This is the first two-day general strike since the ANC came to power.
Far more explicitly than the one day general strike against job losses
last year, this action is directed againt the ANC government. Cosatu is
part of what the media misleadingly describe as the "ruling" Tripartite
Alliance. Cosatu may be part of the Alliance but it is certainly not
ruling. Its role is to police the working class securing acquiesence to
the policies of its "senior" Alliance partner, theANC. All the Cosatu
leadership have been demanding so far is to be consulted about
privatisation, not to oppose it in principle. Pressure from below has
made it impossible for them to continue to act as a political
rubberstamp for anti-working class policies.

The turning point was when the ANC national executive committee publicly
rejected Cosatu’s demands for a moratorium on privatisation and gave
their unqualified backing to the government’s plans. It was no longer
possible for the Cosatu leadership to hide behind nonsensical
explanations that the problems lay with individual ministers or the ANC
as a government and not the ANC as a political party.

The Cosatu leadership found themselves caught between their public
humiliation by the ANC from the top and the burning anger of the working
class from below. The working class is experiencing the consequences of
privatisation through the bitter reality of everyday life. As part of
Eskom’s preparation for privatisation, the goverment has instituted a
policy of "cost recovery". People who cannot pay their tariffs are cut
off. Where people responded by illegally reconnecting, the cables
connecting them to the grid are physically removed and metres ripped
from the walls of their homes. Pensioners on the government’s pittance
of R570 (less than 57 pounds) a month have their electricity cut off
days before pension payout day with demands for reconnection fees of
upto R1 500 (150 pounds)!

Homes are being sold to recover arrears, furniture is being sold in
public auctions to enforce the policy of cost recovery. This policy is
being applied ruthlessly and indiscriminately and backed up by private
armed security who have already shot at people killing two known so far
for attempting to resist. The privatisation of water, in particular the
merciless application of the "cost recovery" policy, has resulted in
water-cut offs.

In a rural area in Kwa Zulu Natal last year, a subsidised water supply
in place since before the end of apartheid was summarily terminated with
a demand by the government for a R51 reconnection fee. Only one thrid of
the population in the area could afford it. The remainder went to dams
and rivers. The result? The biggest cholera epidemic in the country’s
history – 105 000 infections which has so far claimed the lives of 220
people. The anger of the working class is based on this experience not
some abstract "ideology" as the government so insultingly suggests.

Privatisation has also been accompanied like a shadow by corruption. In
particular the government’s "black economic empowerment" stratetgy – the
enrichment of a rich minority of aspirant capitalists in the name of the
black majority – has seen ugly confrontatioins as the differernt
empowerment companies struggle like pigs for a place to put their noses
in the public trough.

The strike wave that is currrently sweeping through the country is an
expression of a volcano that is coming to life. The lava spewing out
will leave the political landcscape changed forever. The Tripartite
Alliance may survive – a meeting has been called before the general
strike to repair relations – as a cosy agreement between the leadership
at the top. But at the bottom it is finished. In time the Cosatu
leadership will have to break from the Alliance or risk splitting Cosatu
itself.

The DSM’s call for a campaign of mass non-payment in the
Anti-Privatisation Forum – a coalition of community and left political
organisations based mainly in Gauteng at this stage but planning to
spread nationally – has been accepted. The APF’s Soweto affiliate, the
Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee led by former ANC councillor Trevor
Ngwane expelled for public opposing the ANC’s local government
privatisation programme, is organising a rally in Soweto to launch the
service payment boycott campaign this weekend. The APF is coordinating
illegal reconnections called Operation Khanyisa (Zulu for "light up").
It has successfully begun to place the de facto mass non-payment driven
mainly by an inability to pay, on an organised conscious footing based
on a refusal to pay.

The DSM will be on the platform. We will be calling for suport for
Cosatu’s action and to call upon Cosatu to break form the Alliance and
to pepear to form a mass workers party on a socialist programme.